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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29293878">Say It Again</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudonymoose/pseuds/Pseudonymoose'>Pseudonymoose</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, First Kiss, Force Healing (Star Wars), Hurt Anakin Skywalker, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-02-08</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 06:27:42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,377</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29293878</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudonymoose/pseuds/Pseudonymoose</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In the aftermath of an explosion, Anakin reaches for Obi-Wan. </p><p>Obi-Wan reaches back, and never lets go.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Obi-Wan Kenobi/Anakin Skywalker</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>358</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Say It Again</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Words drifted in from far away:</p><p>“Stay with me, Anakin.”</p><p>Heaviness. He was underwater, could feel the pressure all around him, but that wasn’t right. His lips were dry. He could breathe.</p><p>He couldn’t breathe.</p><p>Something touched his left arm.</p><p>“Easy, Anakin.” A voice was speaking the words. The voice was familiar. “Calm down. Breathe slowly.”</p><p>The voice sounded calm. Instinct told Anakin that it was a façade. Instinct also told him to do as it said.</p><p>He slowed his breathing. It was hard.</p><p>“That’s it, Anakin. Slowly.”</p><p>Cold hardness against his face. Panic.</p><p>The pressure on his arm grew.</p><p>“It’s alright. Calm down. Breathe.”</p><p>Anakin breathed. And again. And again. It was easier.</p><p>He kept breathing, kept listening for the voice. There were other voices now, and shouting. Blaster fire. Booms that shook the ground he lay on.</p><p>He was lying on the ground.</p><p>Why? Where?</p><p>Anakin remembered that he had eyes and forced them to open.</p><p>The world was a blur between his eyelashes; less distinct than a vision, sharper than a dream. There was smoke, and it stung. Figures kneeled over him. Men. Two white helmets, one bisected with blue, and a face. Anakin knew that face.</p><p>Obi-Wan.</p><p>Anakin tried to make his mouth work, to call out to him. All he managed was a weak moan.</p><p>“Hush, Anakin,” the voice said. It was Obi-Wan’s. “It’s alright.”</p><p>The pressure on his arm changed. Obi-Wan was rubbing the back of his wrist. Anakin wanted to grab his hand, but his fingers were stuck together.</p><p>Bubbling panic threatened to rise in him again.</p><p>Breathe. He had to breathe.</p><p>Anakin blinked and felt moisture travel down his cheeks, collecting against what he now realised was an oxygen mask.</p><p>Obi-Wan reached over and gently wiped Anakin’s face. Anakin smelled iron amidst the smoke and carbon scoring.</p><p>“You’re alright,” Obi-Wan said. “Focus on me. We’re going to get you out of here.”</p><p>Here? Where was here? Smoke and shouting and booms and hard ground.</p><p>A battle.</p><p>There had been someone else. He had been here with someone. Not Obi-Wan. Not the men in the helmets. Rex, one of them was Rex, but it wasn’t him. Green light…</p><p>He needed to move, to look around for someone else. For the one he was missing.</p><p>He tried to sit up and his brain stopped working.</p><p>When Anakin came back to himself, all he could see was Obi-Wan. His mouth was moving. Anakin wanted to hear what he was saying, but couldn’t make it out over the anguished shrieking.</p><p>It was him. He was making those sounds.</p><p>If he was making them, surely he could stop them?</p><p>Obi-Wan had told him to focus, Anakin recalled. To focus on him.</p><p>The shrieking ebbed, softened, and stopped.</p><p>“Shh, Anakin,” Obi-Wan was saying. “That’s it. I’ve got you.”</p><p>There was no reason to panic. Obi-Wan was there. Obi-Wan, and Rex, and… Missing.</p><p>She was missing.</p><p>Anakin couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell Obi-Wan. She was missing. Where was she? Where was Ahsoka?</p><p>Obi-Wan was talking. Anakin couldn’t hear him. Darkness crept around the edges of his vision, blank infinity encroaching on his mind. Ahsoka.</p><p>Terrified blue eyes above him. Anakin focused on them, and was swept away.</p>
<hr/><p>This time, he truly was underwater.</p><p>Bacta. Warm and viscous between his toes.</p><p>Anakin floated at the cusp of awareness, disconnected from the physical. The force was everywhere, and he was the force.</p><p>Serenity. Peace.</p>
<hr/><p>Waking hurt.</p><p>There were painkillers in his system, he could tell by the numbness, but still he ached. Every part of him. He was lightheaded, woozy.</p><p>A horrible sense of loss shrouded him, which Anakin pushed aside. It was only a side effect of the bacta tank, of being ripped from its womblike embrace. It would fade.</p><p>What had happened? He remembered a battle, a battle going badly. An explosion. Obi-Wan. Pain.</p><p>Ahsoka.</p><p>Anakin opened his eyes. He wasn’t greeted by ceiling, but by a view of a medical bay. He’d been propped upright. The top of an oxygen mask dug into his nose. The room was a vision of white; he wasn’t on his cruiser.</p><p>Ahsoka was missing. She had been with him, then there had been an explosion, and then she was gone.</p><p>“Anakin?”</p><p>The threads of Anakin’s thoughts scattered. Very slowly, he turned his head to the left, cheek meeting cool pillow.</p><p>It was as if they’d never left the battlefield. Obi-Wan was sitting beside him, looking almost as he had before. Tired, harried, determined to hold himself together, to exude a calm he did not feel. Anakin learned all of this in less than the time it took for Obi-Wan to register that he was awake.</p><p>Obi-Wan slumped in his seat. “Anakin,” he said. There was too much emotion in his voice for Anakin to digest.</p><p>Anakin blinked at him, roused by worry. This wasn’t Obi-Wan. Something awful must have happened. Something really awful. And Ahsoka…</p><p>Two terrible convictions struck Anakin. The first was unthinkable, so he skipped to the second: he needed Obi-Wan. Needed to hold onto him, to break through the mist and reassure himself that Obi-Wan was there. Otherwise he would never be able ask the question he had to ask, or hear the answer.</p><p>Anakin turned his left palm upwards on the bedsheet. He uncurled his fingers and puffed an audible breath out of the side of his mouth, looking pleadingly at Obi-Wan. It was all he had the strength to do.</p><p>Obi-Wan took his hand, and Anakin tried not to cry. Obi-Wan’s thumb languidly stroked the base of his own, fingers resting atop Anakin’s, not entwining with them. He was being absurdly gentle, like he was afraid that Anakin might break.</p><p>“It’s alright,” Obi-Wan murmured. The bags beneath his eyes betrayed the lie.</p><p>Anakin licked his lips, tongue catching the barest tang of blood. He tried to ask his question, managing no more than the first syllable. “Where…”</p><p>“You’re on a medical station,” Obi-Wan said, misunderstanding him. “I’m not sure which one. I never thought to ask.”</p><p>So Obi-Wan didn’t know where they were; hadn’t been paying attention. Anakin could see scratches on Obi-Wan’s face, dirt along his hairline. His robes were clean, but ill-fitting.</p><p>Something awful.</p><p>Dread threatened to overtake Anakin, and he condensed all of his being into the touch of Obi-Wan’s warm skin.</p><p>“There was an explosion,” Obi-Wan continued. His stroking of Anakin’s thumb stuttered, Anakin’s heart with it. “You were hurt. Badly.” He stopped and squeezed Anakin’s hand tightly. “Anakin, I’m so sorry—”</p><p>Anakin turned his head away. He couldn’t look at him.</p><p>She was gone. She was gone, and it was Anakin’s fault. It was all his fault.</p><p>The lights flickered.</p><p>She was gone.</p><p>“Anakin, calm down,” Obi-Wan ordered.</p><p>Anakin realised that he was shaking, and screwed his eyes shut. He searched for his centre, struggling to regulate his breathing. He wasn’t ready for this. He would never be ready for this.</p><p>“Anakin, stop this. You’re alright.”</p><p>He didn’t care. She was gone.</p><p>“Anakin, please, look at me.” Obi-Wan’s grip on Anakin’s hand was crushing. “<em>Please</em>.”</p><p>Anakin blinked away tears and did as he was told. Once again, Obi-Wan loomed over him, eyes wide in shock and helplessness. Anakin whined, and Obi-Wan shushed him.</p><p>“It’s alright,” he said softly. “It’s alright.”</p><p>“It’s not,” Anakin choked out.</p><p>Obi-Wan combed his fingers through Anakin’s damp hair. “Yes, it is. Listen to me, Anakin: you are going to be fine.”</p><p>Anakin shook his head on the pillow, drawing deep breaths of oxygen that made his lungs hurt. Why didn’t Obi-Wan get it? Did he think she was expendable? Had Anakin been expendable to him?</p><p>“She’s gone,” Anakin said. A wave of grief consumed him, and he held on to Obi-Wan.</p><p>Obi-Wan frowned. “Who is?”</p><p>Anakin moaned. “Ahsoka.” He gave up holding back his tears and let them flow.</p><p>“What? Ahsoka—Anakin, <em>no.</em>” Obi-Wan put both hands on Anakin’s shoulders. Horror distorted his features. “Ahsoka is fine. She is absolutely fine, Anakin, I promise you.”</p><p>The words took time to make their way through the muddy slough of Anakin’s brain.</p><p>“She’s fine, really,” Obi-Wan repeated. “She stayed behind to help with the evacuation.”</p><p>“But you were so upset,” Anakin croaked. His temples throbbed. He knew he was relieved, but couldn’t feel it. Nothing made sense.</p><p>Obi-Wan looked away. “Anakin, you…”</p><p>“What?”</p><p>“You almost died,” Obi-Wan said quietly.</p><p>More confusion. “So?”</p><p>Obi-Wan let go of Anakin and collapsed back into his chair, a chair that very clearly did not belong in that room. Anakin was too weak to keep him close, and his thoughts were too chaotic for him to work out how to try.</p><p>Obi-Wan put his head in his hands. His shoulders were hunched. It took Anakin far too long to grasp that he was crying.</p><p>There was nothing Anakin could do. He was a prisoner of his own body.</p><p>Ahsoka was alive. She was okay. Anakin cycled the words through his head like a mantra until they felt real. It helped to calm him down. His breathing eased and the pain in his chest lessened. He was exhausted, but couldn’t give in, not yet. Ahsoka was okay, but Obi-Wan wasn’t. He had to help Obi-Wan.</p><p>Eventually, Obi-Wan went still. Anakin watched him sit up, then glance over at him. It was almost comical, he thought, the way Obi-Wan did a double take on seeing Anakin staring back at him. He’d probably assumed that Anakin had fallen asleep.</p><p>“Sorry,” Obi-Wan said. His face took on a pink tinge, matching his eyes. He swallowed. “I ought to leave. You need to rest.”</p><p>“No,” Anakin said. He extended his hand again.</p><p>Obi-Wan contemplated it in silence. Anakin wished he’d get on with it. It was the only comfort he could offer, though Anakin still didn’t understand why Obi-Wan needed it. Ahsoka was alive, Anakin was alive; even Rex was alive, from what Anakin could remember. It was too much of a conundrum for him to solve with drugs in his veins and the scent of bacta in his nostrils.</p><p>“Please,” Anakin murmured. He could feel himself sinking back into unconsciousness, and tried to hold on. He used his last dregs of effort to push his hand closer to Obi-Wan.</p><p>Obi-Wan held it once more. Anakin let go.</p>
<hr/><p>The air smelled strange.</p><p>Anakin shook off sleep and brought his right hand to his face. The oxygen mask was gone. He didn’t miss it, and nor did his lungs. His head was clear for the first time since the explosion; they must have started weaning him off the painkillers.</p><p>His left arm itched. Anakin scratched at it unsatisfactorily, wishing not for the first time that his prosthetic had fingernails.</p><p>It was in looking down to see what was causing the itch that Anakin discovered that Obi-Wan was still holding his hand.</p><p>Anakin sat forward gingerly, using his right arm to brace himself. Obi-Wan was asleep, his bottom half still in the chair, top half sprawled across Anakin’s legs. Anakin carefully reclined back against the bed.</p><p>Warmth blossomed inside him. Despite everything, Anakin savoured it, the feeling and the moment. Obi-Wan, asleep in his lap.</p><p>His Obi-Wan.</p><p>The thought came without his permission. Guilt followed, as it always did. They were Jedi. Obi-Wan would never be his. Anakin had made his peace with it, but sometimes Obi-Wan would say or do something that gave Anakin hope. Not the flirtatious comments; half a minute at a Kenobi-Ventress duel would be enough to convince anyone that Obi-Wan never flirted with a mind to follow through. No, it was times like this. Obi-Wan holding his hand because Anakin, drugged out of his senses, had begged him to.</p><p>These moments with Obi-Wan were like getting drunk on cheap Corellian moonshine: he knew he’d wake up with a hell of a headache, but it didn’t keep him from downing another shot.</p><p>Anakin began the process of extricating his hand from Obi-Wan’s. The situation would be awkward enough when Obi-Wan woke without that adding to it. Unfortunately for both of them, Obi-Wan’s subconscious was apparently unwilling to cooperate. The more Anakin tried to pull away, the tighter Obi-Wan’s grip became. At the rate it was going, Obi-Wan would wake up to Anakin’s rejection, and that was something Anakin would not permit. He gave up.</p><p>He was stuck. He couldn’t try to get up, because he would wake Obi-Wan. He couldn’t call for a medic or healer, because they would wake Obi-Wan or worse, kick him out. He couldn’t reach for the holopad he could see on the cabinet to his left, because Obi-Wan was holding that hand and Anakin thought it likely that twisting around with his right would be a very bad idea.</p><p>He tried it anyway. It was a very bad idea. Sharp pain rocketed across the right side of his rib cage and his sternum. He clenched his fists, panting, forgetting that one of his fists was wrapped around Obi-Wan’s. By some stroke of fortune, Obi-Wan didn’t stir.</p><p>Anakin went limp against the raised back board, cold sweat sticking the plain grey medical gown to his skin. He breathed through the pain. At least now he knew where he’d been injured. No wonder they had medevacked him to a medical station. He was lucky to be alive at all.</p><p>The realisation sobered him. Death wasn’t something he feared, not for himself. Others were another matter. Bombs weren’t selective about who they killed. Anakin had been the one caught in the fallout of that blast, but it could so easily have been someone else, someone he cared about. The memory of believing he had lost Ahsoka was muddled and indistinct, corrupted by a haze of delirium, but Anakin knew that it would never leave him. He remembered the loss of his mother, remembered what it drove him to.</p><p>He looked down at Obi-Wan, at the crease in the corner of his eye, at the way his free arm curved almost protectively over Anakin’s legs. If their positions had been reversed, if Obi-Wan had been the one getting blown up, Anakin didn’t think that he would have been there to hold his hand. If Obi-Wan had died, Anakin wasn’t sure he’d even be there at all. That was the danger of attachment that the Jedi warned against. That was the danger of rage and grief, the danger of the dark side. It was a fire that blazed until it burned everything in its path, unable to stop unless it <em>was</em> stopped.</p><p>Anakin knew the dangers. He had lived them. They terrified him.</p><p>That didn’t mean that he could let Obi-Wan go.</p><p>Anakin touched his ribs. The pain had receded to a dull ache, which he could tolerate. He dropped his hand down to his lap, letting his bare metal fingers hover next to the top of Obi-Wan’s head. He yearned to run them through his hair, but resisted. He wouldn’t betray Obi-Wan’s trust by taking liberties. His hand fell to his side, and he satisfied himself with watching Obi-Wan sleep.</p><p>It was quiet enough that he could hear Obi-Wan’s steady breathing. Anakin tasked himself with matching it in some strange form of conscious meditation.</p><p>When Obi-Wan did wake, he did so violently, whacking his arm on Anakin’s knee. He whimpered, and Anakin instantly snapped back to total alertness.</p><p>“Are you alright, Master?”</p><p>Obi-Wan’s eyes shot open. He pushed himself up and scrambled back into his chair. He noticed their hands and tried to break away, but Anakin wouldn’t let go. He should have, but he couldn’t. Impossibly, Obi-Wan looked worse than Anakin felt.</p><p>“Don’t take this the wrong way,” Anakin said, “but you look like a pile of bantha crap.”</p><p>Obi-Wan’s expression was unreadable. “I’m not sure that there is right way to take that, Anakin.”</p><p>“I accept your point,” Anakin said. His throat was a desert, but he persevered. “Want to tell me why?”</p><p>“Why what?” His bewilderment concerned Anakin, as much as he found it endearing.</p><p>“Why you look like a pile of bantha crap,” Anakin said slowly.</p><p>Obi-Wan tugged at his hand again, and Anakin reluctantly released him. “I suppose you could say I’ve had a difficult few days,” Obi-Wan said, placing his elbows on his knees and resting his chin on his interlocked fingers.</p><p>“<em>You’ve</em> had a difficult few days?” Anakin asked. He gestured at himself. “I’m the one who practically got a bomb dropped on top of them.”</p><p>Obi-Wan flinched. “Please don’t say that, Anakin.”</p><p>“Why not, it’s true,” Anakin protested. “How long have I been here, anyway?”</p><p>“Five days,” Obi-Wan said, slipping his face behind his hands. “Added to the day it took to get here on the medical transport. That was not a journey I would like to repeat.”</p><p>“A week?” Anakin’s mind whirled, glossing over for the moment how Obi-Wan had admitted to coming with him on the medical transport. A week since the explosion, and he was only now awake and lucid. “How bad…?”</p><p>“Very,” Obi-Wan said, emotionless. “Nobody thought you’d make it to the station. That was why Ahsoka stayed behind. Rex and I forced her to. No Padawan needs to watch their Master die.”</p><p>Anakin comprehended this in silence. He should be dead. A day on a transport with injuries that required five days submersed in bacta to heal? No way. He should be dead.</p><p>“Were you here all that time?” Anakin asked. He couldn’t have been. The Council would never have allowed it.</p><p>Obi-Wan didn’t answer straight away. “I was,” he said at last. Anakin waited for him to elaborate, but he didn’t.</p><p>“Can’t have been much fun watching someone float around in a bacta tank for that long,” Anakin said.</p><p>Obi-Wan laughed. It wasn’t a nice sound. “No, Anakin. Fun is the very last word I would choose to describe it.”</p><p>“You could have left,” Anakin said. “I wouldn’t have known.”</p><p>Obi-Wan shook his head, expression still hidden behind his hands. “I couldn’t leave you.”</p><p>Anakin bit his lip. Here, again, another of those moments. Hope rose in him and he quashed it. He knew how it felt to believe his Padawan dead. Obi-Wan was only doing what he would do for Ahsoka.</p><p>“Bet the Council weren’t too happy about that,” Anakin said.</p><p>“The Council are furious.” Obi-Wan raised his head. Anakin was surprised to see him smiling, even if that smile was grim and cold. “Mace Windu gave me quite the dressing down.”</p><p>“Mace Windu can—”</p><p>“Don’t, Anakin. I deserved it.” Obi-Wan met his gaze. “I am afraid I haven’t been behaving as a Jedi should, of late.”</p><p>“No need to apologise to me, Master,” Anakin said. He felt as if Obi-Wan could look right through him. It wasn’t an uncomfortable sensation. “When have I ever behaved as a Jedi should?”</p><p>Obi-Wan’s smile slipped and turned sad. “You deserve better than me, Anakin.”</p><p>“Come off it,” Anakin said. “There is no one better than you.” Obi-Wan looked fondly doubtful, and Anakin wasn’t having it. “Who else but you would spend a week sitting around in a medcenter, waiting for me to wake up and say that they look like bantha crap?”</p><p>“I shouldn’t have done that,” Obi-Wan said. He seemed disappointed, but not regretful.</p><p>“I’ve said worse,” Anakin quipped. This was too much. He needed Obi-Wan to stop this, now, before Anakin said or did something that he couldn’t take back.</p><p>“As if I could forget,” Obi-Wan said. “How are you feeling?”</p><p>“I’m fine,” Anakin told him. He dismissively waved off Obi-Wan’s attempt to object. “I know, I know. But I really do feel fine.”</p><p>Obi-Wan shoved both hands into his hair and addressed the floor. “Don’t lie to me, Anakin.”</p><p>“I’m not—”</p><p>Obi-Wan groaned in frustration. “By all means, put on your invincible hero act for the medics and whoever else comes in here, but please, Anakin. Don’t do it for me. I can’t—” He exhaled through his teeth. “I need to know. Please.”</p><p>Footsteps passed by in the corridor. Anakin stared at the bedsheets, torn. On the one hand, admitting the truth would be embarrassing and was unlikely to make Obi-Wan feel better. On the other…</p><p>He glanced at Obi-Wan. Allowed himself to truly see what a wreck he was. Borrowed clothes, untreated cuts, a shell of himself. Obi-Wan had watched a bacta tank for five days, slept hunched in a chair, endured the wrath of the council, all because of Anakin. Regardless of Obi-Wan’s reasons, which Anakin refused to contemplate, he deserved Anakin’s honesty.</p><p>“My chest still hurts when I move,” Anakin said quietly, “but most of the time it just aches a bit. Nothing I can’t handle. I can breathe okay now, so that’s something.”</p><p>He heard the rustle of cloth as Obi-Wan shifted. “That’s good.”</p><p>“Yeah,” Anakin said. He snorted. “I mean, I’m alive. Pretty sure I shouldn’t be, so I’ll take what I can get.”</p><p>Obi-Wan didn’t reply. Anakin looked over and found him staring into nothing, his face pale and drawn.</p><p>“Obi-Wan?”</p><p>Extending his left arm, Anakin found that he could just about reach Obi-Wan’s shoulder. He touched it, and Obi-Wan jumped.</p><p>“Sorry,” Obi-Wan said. He blinked quickly. Anakin’s heart was breaking for him, but he kept his expression neutral. “It’s good, that you’re doing so well.”</p><p>“Enough of me,” Anakin said. There were holes in his understanding, but he could tell that Obi-Wan was in pieces. He had to know why. “I was honest with you. Now I want you to be honest with me.”</p><p>“I have been honest with you,” Obi-Wan mumbled.</p><p>“No, you haven’t.” Anakin was very aware of his pulse. “Why did you come with me on the medical transport?” Lines appeared on Obi-Wan’s brow, lines of tension. They spurred Anakin on. “Why did you stay? Why go against the council?” He had to know, even if Obi-Wan would never give him the answers he wanted to hear. “Why do you look like bantha crap?”</p><p>He tried to joke, but his voice broke.</p><p>Obi-Wan brushed Anakin’s hand from his shoulder and held it loosely in both of his own, tracing the lines and callouses with his eyes. He was quiet for a long time, and Anakin didn’t interrupt, though the urge to do so was strong.</p><p>“There are a lot of answers I could give you to those questions, Anakin,” Obi-Wan said softly.</p><p>“I’d like the true ones, if you don’t mind,” Anakin said.</p><p>“I mind very much.” Obi-Wan placed Anakin’s hand back on the bed, but didn’t move away. He dragged his finger along Anakin’s knuckles.</p><p>“Obi-Wan…” Anakin supressed a shiver. He reminded himself that this was platonic. Obi-Wan was making that difficult.</p><p>Obi-Wan tapped Anakin’s first knuckle. “I came with you on the transport because I didn’t want to leave you,” he said, with a casual simplicity that was jarring. “Everyone thought you were going to die. I thought you were going to die. I couldn’t let you die alone.”</p><p>Before Anakin had a chance to process this, Obi-Wan tapped the next knuckle and went on. “I stayed, even knowing that you were going to live, because I was afraid that you would not. I came so close to losing you that I needed to be near you. I needed to be able to see you breathing, to hear your heart beating, to remind myself that you were still here.”</p><p>Anakin twisted his wrist and grabbed on to Obi-Wan, unthinking.</p><p>“I went against the council…” Obi-Wan trailed off. Anakin laced their fingers together. “I went against the council to stay with you because I had already chosen you, Anakin. On the transport. You were dying, and I couldn’t let you die.” His voice was thick. “I couldn’t lose you. So I—I didn’t know that I could do it. I didn’t know if it was possible, but I had to try.”</p><p>“Try what?” Anakin asked.</p><p>“We were alone,” Obi-Wan said. “The medics had gone. They’d done everything they could, and they said you were no longer in pain, and… I think they wanted to let me say goodbye.”</p><p>Anakin shut his eyes. Unbidden, images came to him. Obi-Wan, crying over his body. Himself, in Obi-Wan’s place, watching Obi-Wan’s life slip away.</p><p>“It wasn’t a conscious decision,” Obi-Wan continued. “I… touched the dressings. And I called on the force. And when the medics came back, you were still alive; and we arrived here, and you were still alive. They were calling it a miracle, but it was me.” He sounded ashamed.</p><p>“Force healing.” Anakin found himself bereft of words.</p><p>“Yes.” Obi-Wan cleared his throat. “I tried it once, before I became Qui-Gon’s Padawan, but I didn’t have the talent. I can only assume that it was my attachment to you that allowed me to make the connection. So when the Council ordered me to leave you and get back to my post, I said no. Rightly or wrongly, I had already breached the Code. ‘There is no death, there is the force’,” he recited bitterly.</p><p>“You saved my life,” Anakin whispered.</p><p>“Yes,” Obi-Wan said. “And I did it for entirely selfish reasons.” Anakin opened his eyes and found him with his head bowed in supplication. “To answer your last question, Anakin; I look like bantha crap, as you so eloquently put it, because I love you, and I very nearly lost you, and that would have been more than I could bear.”</p><p>Anakin stretched across and cupped Obi-Wan’s cheek in his metal hand, heedless of the pain it caused him. It couldn’t be true. It couldn’t. He was dreaming, had fallen back into delirium. And if it <em>was</em> true, Obi-Wan didn’t mean it like—</p><p>“Say that again,” Anakin said.</p><p>Obi-Wan met his eyes, questioning. Timid. Unsure.</p><p>“Say it again,” Anakin repeated, hating the desperation in his tone, the way his torso shook with the strain of holding himself up.</p><p>“I love you,” Obi-Wan whispered.</p><p>Anakin’s strength gave out and he flopped backwards, gasping and clutching his side. Obi-Wan sprang up at once, leaning over him, saying his name. Anakin reached for the force. The pain he dispelled was replaced with Obi-Wan, a sense of his fear, anxiety, panic, grief; a deep and primal urge to protect, to possess. All feelings he knew well.</p><p>“Should I call a medic?” Obi-Wan asked urgently.</p><p>Anakin shook his head. The pain was fading, and he had detached himself from it. His eyes darted to Obi-Wan’s lips. Without giving himself time to doubt, he grasped Obi-Wan’s collar and pulled him down.</p><p>The kiss was terrible. The angle was atrocious, their noses knocking together. Anakin’s lips were chapped, and he might as well have been kissing a statue. He held on to Obi-Wan’s robes as his stomach dropped.</p><p>Obi-Wan loved him, but not like that.</p><p>Just as Anakin was about to break away, searching for apologies, warmth enveloped the side of his neck. Obi-Wan kissed him back. It was tentative, but Anakin returned it hungrily, taking full advantage when Obi-Wan’s lips parted against his. He buried his fingers in Obi-Wan’s hair, feeling dirt and grease and both loving and hating that he, Anakin, was the reason Obi-Wan hadn’t washed it in a week. Tangible evidence that Anakin was loved.</p><p>Obi-Wan was the one to break the kiss, when it had slowed to something more tender. Anakin had a firm hold on the back of his skull, keeping their foreheads together so that Obi-Wan couldn’t dance out of Anakin’s reach. He was ready for Obi-Wan’s excuses, ready for him to try to run away. Anakin wasn’t going to let him go without a fight. Not now; not ever.</p><p>“Anakin,” Obi-Wan breathed.</p><p>“I love you too,” Anakin said. The secret he’d harboured for too long, shared with the only soul who needed to know it. “I love you.” He would never stop saying it.</p><p>“The Code,” Obi-Wan said.</p><p>Anakin sank back against the pillows enough to look into Obi-Wan’s eyes. The disbelieving hope he saw in them stoked the lonely, resilient flame in his heart. “You practically said it yourself,” Anakin told him. “You’ve already broken the Code—<em>we’ve</em> broken it—enough that breaking it a little more is hardly going to hurt.”</p><p>Obi-Wan kissed him again, close-mouthed and impulsive, then straightened. Anakin’s left hand fell from his hair, but his right stayed bunched in his robes.</p><p>“Let’s be clear,” Anakin said, before Obi-Wan could protest. “You used the force to save my life. I didn’t even know that was something a Jedi could do, but you managed it.” Pride and wonder swelled in him. “I don’t think you can have a bigger case of attachment than that.”</p><p>Obi-Wan covered Anakin’s right hand with his own. “I won’t be the reason you fail, Anakin. I won’t take you from the Order.”</p><p>“Who said anything about leaving the Jedi?” Anakin said. “I don’t know if you’d noticed, but we are in the middle of a war. They need us. You know what, I dare the Council to throw us out.”</p><p>“Anakin—”</p><p>“I dare them.” Anakin stared him down. “It would be their loss. Hell, we might be better off without them.”</p><p>“I won’t let you abandon Ahsoka,” Obi-Wan said sternly. He grimaced. “Not that you would, of course.”</p><p>“Never,” Anakin vowed. Ahsoka was… she was everything in Anakin’s life that wasn’t Obi-Wan. Between the two, he was complete. She was the sister he had never known he wanted, the daughter he would never have. “If the Council forced us out of the Order, she would follow.” He knew it was true. “Not because of me, but because of them. She wouldn’t want any part of it.”</p><p>Obi-Wan nodded subtly, and Anakin sensed that he was close to conceding.</p><p>“I love you,” Anakin said again. “Nobody can change that.”</p><p>“I know,” Obi-Wan murmured.</p><p>Obi-Wan sat down on the edge of the bed and Anakin knew he had won, if only because Obi-Wan was too shattered to fight him.</p><p>“Get over here,” Anakin said, beckoning. Obi-Wan’s expression creased, then cleared.</p><p>The last time Anakin had dragged Obi-Wan into a medcenter bed with him, he’d just lost his mother and his arm. Before that, he’d been a terrified child with concussion and a broken leg. On both occasions, he had needed Obi-Wan. Now, Obi-Wan needed him. Anakin just wanted. He wanted so many things, but having Obi-Wan right next to him, holding him, would be a start.</p><p>Obi-Wan chose to reference the earlier example. “How old are you, Anakin?”</p><p>“Old enough to tell you what to do,” Anakin said. He cautiously scooted to the right, wincing involuntarily. Obi-Wan stepped in to help, and he accepted it, letting him rearrange the pillows behind him. “I get the feeling I’m not going to be stepping on another battlefield for a while.”</p><p>“Not if I can help it,” Obi-Wan said mildly. He stroked Anakin’s hair off his brow. “Are you sure you want me?”</p><p>“Obi-Wan, I love you.” Anakin pressed a kiss to his palm. “How many times am I going to have to say it?”</p><p>“A lot, I hope,” Obi-Wan said, colouring. Anakin smiled. “However, I was talking about this.” He patted the mattress. “The last thing I want is to hurt you.”</p><p>“It would hurt me more if you refused.” It wasn’t an exaggeration. Obi-Wan seemed to sense his sincerity, and kissed Anakin’s jaw lightly before retreating.</p><p>Anakin watched Obi-Wan remove his boots and arrange them neatly under the chair. Wordlessly, Obi-Wan lay down beside him. He hesitated, then nestled his head on Anakin’s left shoulder, draping an arm across his waist.</p><p>“Is this okay?” Obi-Wan asked. “I’m not hurting you?”</p><p>“It’s perfect,” Anakin said.</p><p>He could hardly believe this was happening. Obi-Wan loved him. Obi-Wan saved him. Obi-Wan had broken the Code for him, chosen him over the Council. Obi-Wan was here, holding him. Obi-Wan was his.</p><p>It was more than Anakin could ever have dared to hope for.</p><p>Where they went from that point on didn’t matter. The Council, the Code, his injuries, the war; none of it mattered, not to Anakin, not in that moment. Obi-Wan was his. He was Anakin’s.</p><p>“Say it again,” Anakin said, letting his eyelids fall closed.</p><p>Obi-Wan found his hand. “I love you.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I was meant to be writing fluff, what happened?</p><p>For the record, my medical knowledge generally consists of the "put a wet paper towel on it" we got in primary school. I don't think that little piece of advice would have been of much use to Anakin.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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